


the first language we speak

by imperfectcircle



Series: Stories by theme: Romance [20]
Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Dorks in Love, LA-era but pre-Crooked, M/M, Multi, OT3, Obliviousness, everyone is kind to everyone else and that's important, it's 2020 and I am BACK ON MY BULLSHIT, low conflict and minimal plot, polyamorous pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:52:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/pseuds/imperfectcircle
Summary: When Lovett finally cracked and admitted he hadn't written anything for months, Jon and Tommy didn'tmove inmove in, they just showed up and never left.
Relationships: Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor
Series: Stories by theme: Romance [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/327392
Comments: 39
Kudos: 96





	the first language we speak

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting half-written on my hard drive since November, but sometimes you just need a little push to get something done! :) 
> 
> This story briefly references Lovett's post 1600 Penn writer's block, but doesn't describe or dwell on it. 
> 
> Many thanks to Laliandra and Kenopsia for looking this over for me. <3 
> 
> As ever, please keep it secret, keep it safe. This is not something anyone even remotely connected with Crooked Media should ever know about.

When Lovett finally cracked and admitted he hadn't written anything for months, Jon and Tommy didn't _move in_ move in, they just showed up and never left. It made sense at the time, Jon will swear to that. He hadn't been able to help from across the street, never mind Tommy all the way over in San Francisco, so the solution had been obvious. 

Lovett has only the one guest room, but Jon and Tommy have shared smaller rooms in worse climates, so that’s not a problem. 

"Your house is literally right there," Lovett had protested on that first evening, jabbing his finger accusingly at the window through which Jon's house could clearly be seen, just standing there uselessly on the other side of the street with its thumb up its ass not helping anyone. He hadn't meant it, though. A month later he's no longer raising even a cursory objection, which is good, because Jon isn't budging. Lovett is happier like this. Tommy is happier like this. And Jon would do a lot worse to make them happy than share a slightly-too-small-for-three-grown-men house with his two best friends. 

Right now, the three of them are working together on a pilot, but honestly it’s mainly a pretext to get Lovett talking about work, and sometimes even writing things down. In a way, they're his muses, a thought that makes Jon laugh but also maybe feel a little bit proud? He's helping. They're helping. 

One day the three of them are sitting around on their laptops avoiding writing through the media of twitter (Jon), the New York Times (Tommy) and -- they're about to discover -- reddit (Lovett), when Lovett launches into this long and convoluted story about some guy posting for advice on reddit about whether his landlord is writing him threatening notes. "But then the top comment is, uh, hey, so maybe you should check your apartment's carbon monoxide levels? and it turns out --" Lovett pauses triumphantly. "-- this guy living alone in his shitty apartment with no ventilation has been hallucinating because of carbon monoxide poisoning." 

"Well, shit," Tommy says. "You think we could work that into the show? Maybe Shawna --" The Senator's sharp, prickly chief of staff, who over the first season is slowly revealed to have a strong moral compass and a wicked sense of humour. "-- notices symptoms in one of the interns?"

Lovett makes a considering noise. "Okay, so where would that go in her arc?"

And they're off. Lovett is surprisingly ruthless about character notes that don't further plot or theme, and by the time they're done they've moved from landlord paranoia and carbon monoxide to appendicitis and health insurance. 

"She's not _nice_," Tommy reminds Jon, not for the first time, when Jon suggests they close on Shawna waiting by the intern's -- either Liz or Raj, they haven't decided which yet -- bedside. "We don't need to soften her like that." 

It's not softening, Jon wants to argue, but he has a sneaking suspicion he's wrong. He just hates the idea their audience might not like Shawna just because she's got good reason not to wear her heart on her sleeve. 

He jots down some dialogue for Lovett to look over. Tommy edits their meticulously color-coded spreadsheet of characters, episodes, A- and B-plots, and themes. Lovett switches away from reddit to start typing into a clean document. It's good. 

Of course, because of who Lovett is as a person, this is not the end of the reddit thing. The next day Lovett tells them about a guy whose ex-girlfriend keeps spoiling him for Game of Thrones -- "She creates these new accounts on facebook just to spoil him, and when people are like, hey, buddy, pal, why do you keep adding these strange women on facebook when you _know_ they're just your ex being a dick, he says, uh, they're really hot?" -- and then launches into a whole bit about convoluted revenge strategies that ends up somehow with sending octopuses through the mail. 

"The inside of your head in a strange place," Jon tells him. 

"I'm sorry, Mr I'm Friends With All My Exes And I'll Probably Make Beautiful Speeches At Their Weddings But Not In A Way That Makes Their New Spouses Feel Threatened, we can't all be paragons of forgiveness and grace. Some of us are a little less speech, a little more octopus, okay?" 

Jon laughs easily, not sure how he feels about that. He _is_ friends with all of his exes, but then he doesn't get why people aren't? Why would you date someone -- properly date, not just mess around with -- someone you didn't want to be friends with? He's never had the sort of breakup Tommy's had, messy and painful enough that you just need to draw a line under everything, good and bad. And he's never had the sort of not-quite-relationships Lovett drifted into and out of in DC, the ones that always made Jon feel vaguely, uncomfortably angry Lovett didn't seem to appreciate his own worth. 

"Oh, hey, this one is perfect," Lovett interrupts Jon's thoughts. "'I [33F] tried training my boyfriend [35M] of three years like a dog and now he's mad at me.' Apparently --" He pauses to skim the post. "-- she read this thing that if you reward a guy's good behaviour with snacks, you can train him to-- Oh my god, this is amazing, she says he's not mad about the training, he's mad about the choice of snacks. He's on a paleo diet and she kept feeding him Reese’s Pieces." 

Tommy laughs. "Dehumanize me as much as you want, but please, no processed sugar."

Jon laughs too, but he's kind of uncomfortable about the whole idea. He likes doing what his girlfriends want him to do, always has, but he doesn't like the idea of being tricked into it. Not when they could just ask.

It could be fun though, he guesses? If it was a consensual thing. A way of letting someone ask you for stuff without feeling self conscious; a way of getting clear, tangible proof that you did good, that you did what they wanted. 

"She doesn't say if it worked," Lovett says, sounding disappointed. Then, more cheerfully: "I bet it did. We're all just big dumb sacks of water and dopamine, when you get down to it."

"True," Tommy says. "With occasional shots of adrenaline just to keep things interesting."

"Did he break up with her?" Jon asks, still kind of worried for [33F] and [35M]. "Are they okay?"

Lovett gives him the same look he's been giving Jon since 2009, which Lovett has voiced over the years as _woah there, Dream Date Ken, the world isn't ready for this much empathy;_ _literally no one as good looking as you needs to be this nice, what the fuck are you hiding?_ and, once, softly, after a particularly gruelling healthcare defeat, _I wish I could make the world as good as you want it to be_.

"Oh, they're fine," Lovett says cheerfully. "She bought a gigantic bag of paleo-approved trail mix and he stepped up the back rubs. But wait until you hear this other one--"

Tommy gives Jon a wicked, conspiratorial grin out of Lovett's eye line. Telegraphing his movement, he puts his hand on Lovett's back, waits a beat, and then offers him a pretzel.

Jon starts to laugh in anticipation of Lovett's reaction at Tommy's joke. Lovett is so completely untrainable -- not through rewards, not through threats, not through repeatedly begging him to come into work at least at 9am, oh my god, are you trying to kill me here? -- that the idea of wrangling him into accepting casual touch with a few pretzels is deeply, delightfully absurd. It would be like Tommy getting a good night's sleep through the magic of hot milk. 

But, huh, Lovett just absentmindedly takes the pretzel and carries on telling them about this other post he saw where some guy put actual wolves in his actual kitchen. 

Tommy pulls a face at Jon, sharing his bemusement, but doesn't move his hand from where it landed, square between Lovett's shoulders. Jon feels -- not jealous, that's too strong a word, but a little like he's missing out. Lovett never normally lets them touch him that long for no reason.

#

After that, it becomes a running joke between Jon and Tommy. Harmless and a little silly. Nothing to write home about. 

When Lovett is sitting with one leg tucked up under him on the couch, Jon will grab some chips or the added-sugar trail mix, sit down next to him making sure to sling an arm over Lovett’s shoulders at the exact moment he offers Lovett a snack. 

When Lovett is standing in the kitchen staring at his coffee maker, Tommy will nudge him out the way with a friendly hip-check, cream cheese bagel at the ready to reward Lovett if their hips stay touching a few extra seconds. 

It's nothing Jon and Tommy don't do naturally with each other -- no rewards required -- so while he's aware it might look a little weird from the outside, it doesn't feel that way from the inside. It's like when he and Tommy decided to leave the White House on the same day, or when he moved coasts and rented a house immediately opposite Lovett, or when two days after Tommy's big break up one of Lovett's roommates mysteriously decided to move out. If you didn't have the context, it might sound kind of a lot, but it's just how they are. 

Maybe two weeks after the pretzel, Jon and Tommy are sitting either side of Lovett on the couch, leaning into him to read the script on his laptop. It's the penultimate scene of the pilot episode, where they finally introduce The Senator. Tommy's worried it's sailing a little too close to The Scottish Show -- Lovett won't let them mention The West Wing by name in the house, claiming, "It's like Macbeth! But worse, because the guy who wrote Macbeth is dead and so are all his lawyers" -- but that has only made Lovett dig his heels in, adamant that there's a reason the structure is a classic. 

"I don't like the transition," Lovett says, laptop perched on his crossed legs. "The audience aren't going to care that The Senator is smart, they're going to care that he _cares_."

The Senator has been the hardest character to figure out. At the start, Jon had just wanted to lean into it, write their own brilliant, driven, visionary, tremendously kind former senator into the script and let the critics make of it what they wanted. Tommy had wanted to lean as far away from it as possible, even floating the idea of setting the show elsewhere in the political system, never mind that this was the part they'd agreed they could write the best. Lovett had settled half the argument by scrolling to the "Major Flaws" section of The Senator's empty character sheet and waiting for Jon to cave. Once Jon had conceded, Tommy had easily followed suit.

Now, Jon offers Lovett some gum and jostles their knees together, leaning close enough to read the screen. “Yeah, it’s too intellectual. Maybe we should wait to introduce the green jobs stuff, start with a more emotive issue?”

Tommy gives him a look that says, clearer than words, _More emotive than the future of the planet?_ but Jon waves him off. They had a hard enough time getting people to care about green jobs when the actual President was talking about it, they’re not going to do any better in the B-plot of a forty-three minute political dramedy. 

“Imagine if we’d been able to do this back at the White House,” Lovett says, elbow resting on Jon’s knee. Tommy has his arm slung along the back of the couch, fingers warm against Jon’s shoulder. “‘I’m sorry, Mr President, we’re going to have to table Iran for now, we think we’ll get better play with something lighter and more domestic. I know schools aren’t on the legislative agenda this session, but have you thought about mixing it up?’”

Tommy’s laughter nudges Lovett a little further against Jon’s side. 

Jon shrugs, warm and fond. DC feels like another world, its high stakes and higher tempers unreal against the light of the LA sun streaming through Lovett’s windows. He had knock-down, drag-out fights with men and women thirty years his senior about optics and messaging in which they accused him of exactly what Lovett described — trading what was right for what would play best on TV — and now he’s finally free to do it, to be an autocratic showman, giving the audience what they want. 

“Green jobs can be emotive,” he hears himself say. “Maybe it’s not the issue, maybe we’re just framing it wrong.”

Lovett’s _hmm_ is willing to be convinced. Tommy's smile is already there. 

Together, they hash out a new way of introducing The Senator. 

#

Lovett is _absolutely_ doing better now Jon and Tommy are here to look after him. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing him look so much happier, so much easier in his skin, and thinking, _Yes, we did that. We were here, and we helped, and it mattered._

Jon spent so long at the White House working on things much bigger than him, much bigger than them all, that he's forgotten how good it can feel to take on a challenge small enough he and Tommy can solve it. The teaching at Chicago had helped, and some of the consultancy projects have captured a flavor, but it's been a long time since he's felt so good about making a real, positive difference. One that counts. 

It helps that all three of them can contribute to the writing. Jon had worried that once they got Lovett over his hump, he and Tommy would just be slowing him down. Not that they can't write -- and both of them gave Lovett enough feedback on 1600 Penn over the year he was working on it that he'd threatened them with co-writing credits -- but Lovett is the one with the genius for this. 

It turns out, though, that three heads are just genuinely better than one when it comes to writing a TV show, at least the way Lovett does it. 

And hey, that kind of makes sense of the last year, too. _Of course_ Lovett was blocked, if he was trying to work everything out on his own. There are too many threads and too many characters for one person to keep in their head _and_ challenge themselves enough to make it interesting. It takes three of them to argue everything out, to approach each problem from enough different angles that they're doing justice to the characters, that they're earning their potential audience's investment in their world. 

But now he's not blocked, which is great, _and_ he still wants them around, which is even greater, and Tommy and Jon have officially taken a backseat at Fenway Consulting so they can focus on this new stage in their careers, which, it turns out, is pretty great too. 

Another day, they're sitting in Lovett's front room on their laptops, same old, same old. The configuration changes -- who's on the couch, who's on the recliner, who's lying on the floor with one leg hooked over the arm of the couch, what the fuck Lovett, how is that possibly comfortable? -- but each iteration is fundamentally the same, fundamentally good. 

Today all three of them are pressed together on the couch, accompanied by the liberal application of touch-linked Reese's Pieces because one day Lovett is going to realize what they're doing and his outrage will be worth the investment. Tommy is leaning in close to Lovett to bicker about something on the laptop sitting across both their laps, his whole body tilted so he hooks his foot round Jon's ankle to keep him steady. It's not part of the joke, but it still makes Jon smile. 

The something they're bickering about is how to keep Kyle, The Senator's deeply unpleasant Legislative Director who quits mid-season to work for a rival, from being a cartoon villain.

"Just because something really happens doesn't mean it _feels_ realistic," Lovett is saying, reaching past Tommy to get to the pack of Reese's Pieces by Jon's knee. "You know and I know that there are a good thousand assholes in DC who behave much worse than Kyle with much shallower reasons, but it doesn't make for good TV."

"We can make it good TV," is Tommy's point, which he must have said at least five times since the whole Kyle Question began. "What's the point of writing something that's not bringing in what we know goes on behind closed doors?"

They go back and forth on it, hashing out different motivations and different betrayals, until Jon feels like maybe they should just kill Kyle off in the first five minutes of the show and start again with a new minor antagonist. 

Tommy and Lovett act like he's just solved world hunger. 

"I knew there was a reason we kept you around," Lovett says, while Tommy nudges his shoulder to Jon's approvingly. "Okay, everyone pull up a blank character sheet. Twenty minutes to sketch out a new minor antagonist, go."

They go. 

#

Lovett heads away for the weekend and Jon feels totally normal about it. So does Tommy. It's great. No one gets weird and twitchy and irritable, and it's not at all like that time someone accidentally switched out the coffee for decaf and the entire speechwriting staff nearly came to blows. 

"You remember that time you guys were all accidentally on decaf for a day?" Tommy says to Jon mid afternoon on the Saturday, because maybe it is a bit like that. 

"Shut up."

"Yeah," Tommy agrees. "Me too."

Jon meets up with a friend of Andy's for a drink that evening. She's funny, good company. Her wife joins them an hour in -- they're new in town, open to making new friends. "Like, mainly queer friends though?" her wife points out when she says this. "No offense." Jon laughs, assures them that none is taken. They laugh too. They're both smitten with Leo, delighted when Jon gives them the okay to feed him fries from their shared plate. 

It's fun, it's good, it's fine. He lets himself back into Lovett's after, ignoring his own house staring at him reproachfully from across the road. At this point he's essentially paying market rent in West Hollywood for an oversized storage locker, but he's good for it. It's not like he's spending it on anything else. 

He feels unsettled. Dissatisfied. He doesn't sleep well.

They go for a run first thing on Sunday. Tommy has his earbuds in. Jon prefers to listen to the rhythm of their feet hitting the sidewalk, the occasional traffic going past, their breath coming in harsh but steady. They do a longer loop than usual, one of the hills with the kind of gradient that makes Jon's calves burn, and eventually it's enough. They go and keep going. It helps. 

"The fuck is wrong with us?" Tommy asks once they're back and all washed up. "He went to New York last month and it was fine. Quiet." He pauses. Clarifies: "Good quiet."

Jon chuckles obediently, but the unsettled feeling only grows. He slumps himself on the couch next to Tommy, manspreading obnoxiously to get a laugh, tousles Tommy's hair as if he's fussing with Leo. It helps a bit, which--

"Fuck."

"Yeah." Tommy jostles him companionably.

"No," Jon clarifies. "Fuck."

Tommy gives him a look. Just as Tommy is well enough versed in Jon's profanities to tell the difference between _fuck, I feel shitty and I don't know why but I know I don't like it_ and _fuck, I've figured it out and I really don't like it_, Jon is well enough versed in Tommy's looks to know he has only a couple of minutes to explain this before Tommy goes from _done with everyone and everything who isn't Jon_ to _done with everything and everyone including Jon_. He just wishes _everything and everyone_ didn't always automatically include Tommy himself.

"Lovett didn't train us. We trained ourselves."

Tommy's look continues.

"What have we been doing over the last month that gives us tiny dopamine hits? That we've been slowly escalating. Really building up that association over time?" Jon wishes he'd moved so his leg wasn't pressed against Tommy's for this conversation. In context, it's not great.

There’s a beat while Tommy catches up.

"_Fuck,_" Tommy says. "We didn't train him to do shit, but we sure as fuck trained ourselves to expect it."

"We are the worst at things," Jon agrees.

"We're pretty fucking terrible at them." Tommy gives a soft laugh. "I mean, you're 'what would happen if FDR and a golden retriever had an impossibly handsome human son' --" He mimics the lilt of Lovett's voice. "-- and I'm 'finally getting some sun after my Anxious Greyhound Goes To Washington phase.' We should have known we'd be easier to train than him."

“This is embarrassing.”

Tommy agrees with a snort. It really fucking is.

They sit side by side on the couch a while longer, staring at Lovett’s blank TV as if it stands some chance of solving this one for them.

After a few minutes, Tommy starts laughing. “Could be worse. Could have trained ourselves to give him backrubs and, what was the other thing?”

Jon tries to think back to the reddit post that started it all. "Take out the trash, maybe? We already do that."

If they left it to Lovett, the trash would go out at the point it developed sentient life and not a minute before.

With a mental shrug, Jon starts laughing too. It could, indeed, be worse. Honestly, he feels better already just knowing he’s not imagining it. Accidentally having conditioned himself like a family pet isn’t a high point of his life to date, but it makes more sense than feeling this shitty because Lovett’s away for the weekend. The former is kind of embarrassing, but the latter would just be weird.

"We can't tell him." Tommy is still smiling, a little rueful. "He'd never let us forget it."

Jon agrees wholeheartedly. Some things are better left as secrets, however much they'd make Lovett crease up with laughter. 

"Did the reddit post have anything about how they un-trained the guy?" Tommy asks. 

They can't find the reddit post, but they are two brilliant strategic minds with a wealth of high level political and communications experience between them, so eventually they settle on googling _untrain my dog_.

"Well," Tommy says. "Now I know what to do if we start begging at mealtimes or pulling on the leash."

Jon, who hasn't yet leash-trained Leo and isn't feeling great about his chances, does his best not to look guilty. "There are also some handy solutions for if one of us starts jumping on people for attention."

They share a silent moment of contemplation. 

"We could ignore it and hope it goes away?" Jon suggests. He likes to think his voice sounds mature and authoritative. 

"We could go dig a ditch and stick our heads in it?" Tommy probably wants to think his voice sounds mature and authoritative too. Jon lets him have it. 

Jon wishes Lovett were here. Not because of the whole Pavlovian whatever of it, but because Lovett is good at things like this. At taking a problem like this and looking at it sideways, finding a solution that feels obvious as soon as he's said it, but that's just far enough out of left field that it doesn't make you feel bad for not seeing it yourself. 

He also kind of wishes the three of them were in this together. It's been good -- _so good_ \-- the three of them working on a show together, for all that the script is secondary to the victory of slowly getting Lovett writing again. Jon loved working with Lovett in the White House, but he always loved it best when they could get Tommy in there with them too, the three of them bouncing ideas off each other and laughing the whole time. He loves working with Tommy now, but he loves it best when they can rope Lovett in to do some consulting on their consulting -- those are the best jobs, the ones that ease some of the worry that he should have stayed in politics, should have stayed in DC trying to do good in a world that weighed heavier on him every day. 

It's a ridiculous thing to wish, but knowing that can't stop him wishing it. Three of them have always been better than two. 

#

They're having an argument about The Senator's wife when it happens. 

Jon didn't want The Senator to have a wife in the first place, so in a just world he’d be excused from this. Unfortunately, as he is well aware, it's not a just world, and he's the one whose voice is veering towards unacceptably loud. 

"We could just keep her off screen?" Lovett suggests. "Embrace the fact that she's not getting her own arc, and make it a running joke. 'Oh, my wife? You just missed her, she had to run off to a meeting with the CDC.'"

"We're not making her an epidemiologist," Jon reminds him, voice sharper than he'd like. Tommy has already spent more than enough time thinking about global pandemics.

"Right, thanks," Lovett says, accepting the correction easily. "A meeting with the Dean then. Or, I don't know, Yo Yo Ma." 

"You don't think that's a shitty thing to do? 'Oh, we have this awesome woman, but she's never on screen and her career is a running gag?'" Jon doesn't feel great about the way he's phrased it, but he doesn't feel great about this whole discussion. He wanted The Senator to be gay. He wanted a season-long slow-burn romance. He wanted a confession in the rain. 

"We're not having a confession in the rain," Tommy says, coming back into the room with a bowl of those beet chips from Whole Foods that Lovett had refused to eat for three years and now inexplicably loves. 

Jon bristles. It's been days since he last brought that up.

"Ooh, treats!" Lovett says, making grabby hands for the beet chips. 

Tommy automatically sits down nearly on top of him, pushing him so he's sandwiched between Tommy and Jon, solid and warm, before rewarding him with a chip. 

The tension flows out of Jon so quickly it would be embarrassing if anyone but Tommy knew about it. 

"You know," Lovett says, smirking at them both. "If you were anyone else, I'd think you were jonesing for some, you know, some brisket in your bagel."

Jon and Tommy exchange a blank look. Tommy takes this one: "We have no idea what that means."

"Some _brisket_," Lovett says, waggling his eyebrows, "in your _bagel_." 

Oh. _Oh._ Jon sees Tommy flush, feels himself follow suit. 

"Aren't we technically white bread?" Jon asks, because he's never gotten out of the habit of critiquing Lovett's metaphors, and also, what the actual fuck? Just because they've conditioned themselves into some weird automatic response, doesn't mean anyone's jonesing for anything. "I'm pretty sure if I tried to call myself a bagel you'd say that was a hate crime."

Seriously. What the actual fuck? 

"And it would be," Lovett agrees easily.

Jon's gut churns. He's not hitting on anyone. He's just, it's admittedly a bit weird, that he and Tommy have accidentally trained themselves to feel better when they're touching Lovett, and in the wrong light you could see it like, maybe, something that wasn't _not_ sexual, but it's not. Is it? It isn't. Is it? 

Lovett is still speaking: "Some brisket in your Wonder Bread doesn't quite have the same ring to it, though." He makes a considering noise. "Some brisket in your cornbread?" 

It's not that Lovett isn't attractive. If Jon were going to be with a guy -- like, if the fate of the world depended on it or something, you know, one of those idle thoughts everyone has -- then it would be Lovett, obviously. Or Tommy, but Tommy's straight, so that's a non-starter, but Lovett, Jon could be with Lovett if he had to, for, like, world-saving reasons. 

Which isn't important. Because Jon is straight, and just because he's spent the last three weeks feeling increasingly good whenever he touches Lovett -- whenever he and Tommy touch Lovett, his brain reminds him, as if this wasn't already complicated enough -- and just because he wants to be close to Lovett all the time and laugh at his jokes and listen to him when he's serious and protect his sweet gentle heart, that's not, it doesn't have to mean anything. He feels the same way about Tommy, for goodness' sake. It's just how you feel about your best friends -- like you'd do anything for them, and you want to be near them all the time, and you hate that they won't let you touch them as much as you want, and and it feels weird and bad whenever you're not together or someone else gets a part of them that you don't get. 

Which. Okay. When he puts it like that it sounds weird. But it's not like that. He'd know if it was like that. Wouldn't he? 

Tommy makes a face. Jon has no idea if that's a _brisket in your cornbread sounds gross_ face or a _my entire sexual identity has just been knocked off kilter and I think it might be my own damned fault_ face, and now seems like not the greatest time to ask. 

"Yeah, no, you're right," Lovett says to Tommy. "Brisket in your cornbread would be even weirder than the two of you actually hitting on me." Lovett's still cheerful, probably because the inside of his head isn't just one big error screen. 

_The application "Straight" quit unexpectedly,_ Jon thinks to himself somewhat hysterically. _Would you like to file an error report?_

Tommy gives a weird fake laugh that fools no one. "Yeah, super weird," he says. 

Super weird. Yeah. Jon stands up and walks out the front door. 

#

Like the mature and responsible adult he pretends to be, Jon chooses now to go check in on his own empty, useless house across the way. When he gets there, he takes in the musty smell, the general air of pointless whatever, and allows himself some time to sit on his couch with his head between his legs, freaking the fuck out. Leo flops down next to him, warm and soft and forgiving against his hip. It's good to have a dog that doesn't judge you. 

He hears the door open and shut, but it's only Tommy, and Jon was already well fucking aware he was never going to hide this from Tommy for long. 

"You okay there, buddy?" Tommy asks. 

Jon says something bland and reassuring as he straightens himself up -- hah -- and takes in Tommy's worried smile, the tightness around his eyes. 

_More to the point,_ Jon thinks but doesn't say, _are you okay?_

Tommy reads it in his face anyway, because of course he does, and sits down heavily next to Leo. "Lovett’s trying to work out if he should be mad at you for your homophobic freak out or mad at himself for keeping you away from your actual home so long you forgot how to be civilized.”

“Yeah? What’s he settled on?”

“Ordering burgers from that place you hate but not enjoying them.”

That’s fair. 

“And how are you doing, buddy?” Jon asks. 

Tommy seesaws his hand. “I.” He stops. Starts again. “I’ll be fine.”

Jon nudges him. Between them, Leo looks up, hopeful for playtime. “You know you don’t have to be fine, right? The point of all this —“ His vague gesture encompasses leaving the White House, moving across the country, moving themselves into Lovett’s house, getting a dog, drinking too heavily for a few months and then not drinking at all for a few months after that, starting a consulting business together, everything. “— was we don’t have to be okay all the time any more.”

Tommy sniffs something that could be a laugh. “No, I am. I will be. This isn’t a trauma response, you don’t need to get me high and make me talk about my dad again.”

They sit in not uncomfortable silence for a while. Jon fusses with Leo’s ears. Tommy checks the news on his phone. 

“Sorry,” Tommy says eventually. “I guess I am maybe freaking out a bit?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah." Then, fast and almost like he's braced for impact, Tommy says all in one breath: "I didn't want to come out to you like this."

Jon reacts before his brain catches up with his body, pulling Tommy into a seated hug that gets his arms around Tommy, gets Tommy breathing into his shoulder, and only then has time to think things like, _What?_ and _Huh?_ and _Oh._

"I love you," Jon says. His brain is taking its sweet time to understand what's happening, but his heart and his gut have this one. "You don't have to tell me anything unless or until you're ready, you've got to know that, but whatever you tell me, you're still my best friend, I still love you. There's nothing you could say that would make me anything but proud to know you." 

Tommy pats at Jon's back awkwardly. "I love you too, man," he says after a while. "Obviously."

"Obviously."

"I'm bi," Tommy tells him, still twisted round to fit into the hug Jon's not letting him out of. "I figured it out after Lovett left DC for, uh, for the obvious reasons." 

Jon wants to pretend like he doesn't know what the obvious reasons are. All he can really think is that Tommy is a lot smarter than him, to have worked it out back then. 

"But I thought I got over it," Tommy continues into Jon's shoulder. "I wasn't trying to take advantage with the whole touching thing, I honestly thought it was just a joke, right up until it wasn't."

Tommy is so warm and solid in Jon's arms, but at the same time, so terribly, painfully brittle. Like he's waiting for Jon to be angry, or disappointed, or maybe -- as he'd said, voice aching, one of the times they'd gotten him high and made him talk about his dad -- _done with dealing with all of my exhausting bullshit_. 

Jon didn't know back then how to tell Tommy that he'll never be done, not unless and until Tommy is, and probably not even then, so all he can do is try to show it, and keep on showing it, until Tommy starts to believe him. 

Maybe now isn't a great time to tell Tommy about Jon's own belated realization. Tommy's dealing with enough, and anyway, Tommy knows, actually knows that he's bi, whereas Jon's working theory about his own sexuality is less than an hour old. It would be selfish to share it right now. 

But Jon, it turns out, can only delude himself when he doesn't know he's doing it -- all the excuses and justifications for not telling Tommy pale in comparison to the fact Tommy is alone right now, and Jon has the ability to be there by Tommy's side. 

"Funny story," Jon says. He stops. Starts again. "Funny story. I did have a gay freakout half an hour ago."

He can feel Tommy very carefully not flinch. 

"I." Can he say it? Not with the confidence Tommy did. It's a nascent feeling. A cautious, fragile thing. He regrets, now, the presumption of thinking he could be by Tommy's side in this, when he barely knows what his own side is. But Tommy is here, and worse than saying the wrong thing would be saying nothing at all, so Jon makes the words come out, clipped and firm: "I freaked out because I realized that I might have feelings about men that weren't normal straight guy feelings." 

It sounds so ridiculous said out loud like that. Pathetic. He can hear Lovett's critique now -- _normal straight guy feelings_, what the fuck are those? 

"I mean. I might be bi. Or something else. But I don't know, because an hour ago I thought I was straight, and now I think maybe the way I feel about you and Lovett makes me not that, but it's too new for me to--" 

Tommy is shushing him, shifting their embrace so Tommy's the active hugger, and Jon, face burning and eyes pricking with heat, is the huggee. 

"It's okay. You don't have to-- Oh, Jon." He sounds so fond. "You thought because I said something several _years_ after my lightning bolt, you had to put it into words half an hour after yours just to keep me company?" He rubs circles into Jon's back. It feels really nice. "Of course you did." 

Tommy hasn't said anything about the _you and Lovett_ bit of Jon's incoherent confession, which is fine. It's better than him thinking it's something he's got to take responsibility for. Or, worse, be kind about. 

"Trust you to overachieve," Tommy says after a while, voice still nothing but fond. 

They untangle themselves from the hug eventually, but sit together still, pressed side by side with Leo flopped over their laps where their thighs touch, all three of them enjoying the comfort. 

Eventually, inevitably, Lovett comes to find them:

"For the record, I have every right to be mad at both of you, but also _maybe_ I shouldn't have sexually harassed you in the de facto workplace, so I'm _very graciously_ prepared to call it even. And I changed my mind about the burgers, so I've brought you Mexican." He starts to hand out their orders, pets Leo absently as he does so. "It's not a peace offering and should not be taken as an admission of any further liability, but I didn't want you guys to starve before I decided whether or not to forgive you." 

Tommy huffs a laugh. "Okay, Mr LSAT."

Jon looks at Lovett, standing there wearing sweats and a ratty t-shirt and a _the only way out of this awkwardness is through_ expression Jon is way, way too familiar with, and his stomach hurts. What if Lovett doesn't want him like that? What if he does? Both seem equally terrifying, even with Tommy's thigh against his, even with Leo's tail wagging softly. 

If he were a different person, maybe he would know what to say here, something fair to Lovett and kind to Tommy that gives him the space to follow this feeling through. But all he is is himself, and he doesn't have a clue how to--

"Oh shit," Lovett says, more to himself than to them. Then, to Tommy, "Is he--?" But he cuts himself off, starts again, speaking directly to Jon: "Jon, listen to me. Whatever it is, it's fine. What's a little, uh, heteronormative freakout between friends? Nothing, that's what it is. You were owed one, honestly. Two. Consider yourself still in credit."

Jon doesn't like the sound of that -- what kind of asshole does Lovett think he is? -- but something in him responds to Lovett's voice, feels soothed without paying too much attention to why. 

"Jon's having kind of A Day," Tommy says after Lovett has settled himself on the armchair, one leg tucked up underneath and the other stretched out at an angle that surely can't be comfortable. 

"Totally fine." Lovett fusses with his tacos rather than looking at them. "I mean, arguably I've recently had A Year, so." He twitches a corner of his mouth in a quiet, wry shadow of a smile. 

And just like that, Jon's gut stops doing its ridiculous churning bullshit and starts doing what it does best: telling him exactly what to do with no real thought for the consequences. 

He loves these guys. He really fucking does. He is fully, certifiably Weird about them, and they're both more than a little Weird about him, too. And right now, his gut is telling him that Lovett has a cute mouth, and he wants to kiss it. 

"You have a cute mouth," he tells Lovett. "Can I kiss you?"

Tommy chokes on his empanada. 

"What? Why?" Lovett manages. He's turned as impressive shade of red as Tommy, without the excuse of an obstructed airway. 

Jon slaps Tommy on the back. Shrugs. "You were right. About the brisket. And the cornbread. I didn't realize, because I'm, you know, not always the most in touch with myself or whatever, but you were right. And you have a cute mouth. Can I kiss you?"

Jon's heart hammers in his chest. He watches Lovett look between him and Tommy like he's expecting some cruel punchline, and while he's distantly aware of a pang at the unfairness of a world that's shaped Lovett to expect the worst, most of what he feels is a thrumming anticipation, a hope that overrides everything else. 

Tommy wipes his mouth. "I'm bisexual," he says. "Sorry I didn't tell you before. It was kind of a whole thing."

Lovett's jaw actually drops. It's really fucking cute. 

"I mean, I'm no Jon Favreau --"

"Who is?" Lovett says, possibly on autopilot. 

"-- but yeah. Just putting it out there." Tommy pauses. "Not, I mean, obviously I'm not trying to get in the way of you guys --"

Which, what? 

"-- but I already felt like shit keeping it from you guys, and then I told Jon, and. Yeah."

Every time Jon thinks he could not possibly love brilliant, brave, beautiful Tommy any more, he goes and does something else that makes it clear why he's one of the absolute best people Jon knows. 

"You're both coming out right now? Is that what's happening?" Lovett's scrutinizing them both now, but not like he's expecting a punchline. Like he's seeing them, like he loves them, like he wants them to be okay. And that's why Jon's gut was right -- whatever happens next, they've got each other's backs. He can jump, and even if he doesn't land where he's hoping, his guys will catch him. 

"That's what's happening," Tommy confirms. "Or, I'm coming out right now. Jon might want to do his own thing."

Jon has never in his entire life wanted to do his own thing when he could be doing it with his people instead. He sees no reason to start now. 

"You have a cute mouth," he tells Lovett again, "and I want to kiss you." Then, to Tommy: "You too, obviously."

"Obviously," Lovett echoes. A hint of a smile threatens the corner of his mouth and his eyes are soft in that way Jon loves best. 

"I tried really hard to convince myself I wasn't into either of you," Tommy says. He looks pained. "But it turns out I'm into both of you, which--" He cuts himself off, but it's pretty clear the honest end of that sentence is something like, _Which I've been torturing myself about._

Jon and Lovett exchange a look. 

"The fuck is happening?" Lovett says. "You're bi, and you're not as straight as previously advertized, and both of you are into each other, and also apparently me?"

"And we tried to train you to touch us more, but it backfired and we just trained ourselves," Jon adds in the interests of honesty. 

"Which reddit did _not_ warn us about," Tommy says. "The training thing was meant to be a joke, but then you didn't notice and we took it too far and now Jon's into men."

There is a pause as they all listen to what they've just said. 

"Huh," Lovett says. "Okay. Let's take these one at a time."

Jon makes a noise of frustration he's not proud of. He gets Lovett's position, he really does, but he's kind of put himself out there -- as has Tommy, whose hand has found his at some point in the proceedings, and is squeezing his just a little too hard to be comforting -- and maybe Lovett could hurry it along? 

"Okay, okay, maybe two at a time," Lovett says. He's smiling. He's smiling wide and happy, open and fond. He's smiling. "In what world was I going to turn you -- either of you -- down? We're circling back later to you guys getting your pranks from reddit’s relationship pages, but yes. Obviously. Yes."

They grin at each other. Holy fuck. What the hell are they doing? 

"I want to take you on a date," Jon says, because giving his brain time to catch up with proceedings has never been how he rolls when it matters. "Both of you."

"A date?" Lovett repeats. 

"A date," Jon confirms, feeling the rightness of it. He wants to take them on a date. Of course he does. What else do you do when you like someone -- two someones -- as much as he likes these two someones?

"You heard the man," Tommy says to Lovett. "He wants to take us on a date. Treat us right." 

"Yep," Jon says happily. "I want to take you on a date and treat you right. And then, if you like, afterwards we can all three see where it goes from there." 

This startles a laugh out of Lovett. "Oh we can, can we?" 

Jon shrugs, tries for casual and does not care even a little that he fails. "If you like."

#

Lovett insists on going to Olive Garden. Apparently a first date without breadsticks is homophobic, which is a direct contradiction of everything Jon has so far been given to understand about LA gay male culture, but he's too happy to care. He's taking Tommy and Lovett on a date to Olive Garden and afterwards who knows what might happen? Could be anything. Breadsticks are a small price to pay. 

Tommy shaves close and wears a button down shirt and jeans. When he comes down, Lovett -- who has changed into dark jeans and a soft black t-shirt that Jon wants to rub his face on -- takes one look at him and goes back upstairs. 

"Something I said?" Tommy asks lightly.

Jon laughs, and Tommy gives him an appreciative once-over. Jon's not wearing anything special, just his standard first-date-in-LA Henley and slacks, but something about the way Tommy looks at him sends sparks up and down his spine. Everything feels real in a way it didn't before. He wants them, but it's only just hitting him that they want him back. 

Jon and Tommy are both on their phones when Lovett comes back down -- it's better than awkwardly trying to make pre-date small talk with your best friend you also happen to live and work with -- and Tommy looks up first. 

"Fuck, okay," Tommy says. 

Jon's eyes snap up, and _fuck, okay_. Lovett has changed into another black t-shirt, but this one hugs his biceps, accentuates his shoulders, makes Jon want to put his mouth on every inch of visible skin and go to town. He's still wearing the same jeans, Jon thinks, but he's done something to them -- changed the belt, maybe? -- that draws the eye to his ass, to his thighs. 

Tommy looks at them both with open appreciation. "We could just skip the date and fuck," he says, his tone joking-not-joking. 

"Breadsticks," Lovett counters. "And, you know, giving Jon an additional 40% more time between realizing he has homosexual tendencies and deciding whether to act on them."

It's considerate in that most Lovett of ways, so Jon immediately wants to do the exact opposite just to see what will happen. It's a close call, but he manages to keep his eyes on the prize -- these are his people, he's going to treat them right. 

That said, he doesn't want to leave Lovett wondering. Broadcasting his movements loud and clear, he steps into Lovett's space, rests his hands where the hems of his sleeves meet his biceps. 

Lovett smirks at him. "You want something?"

"I want something," Jon tells him, and leans in to kiss him. 

Kissing Lovett is fireworks on the beach and cool water after a long run and that first sip of champagne to toast in the new year. It's too good to do just once, so he does it again, his heart pounding and his gut telling him, _this, this, yes, this, now._

When he breaks away, Lovett sways after him, eyes dark. 

In the silence that follows, he expects Lovett to break the tension -- some joke, maybe, or just an _Okay then_ to punctuate -- but Lovett says nothing, just touches his mouth absently and looks at Jon like he wants to devour him. Jon wants to be devoured. 

He can't -- won't -- kiss Lovett without kissing Tommy. He reaches out, eyes still on Lovett's reddened lips, and Tommy's hand is there to meet his. 

Kissing Tommy is every late-night confidence they've shared and every time they've clutched each other in helpless laughter and something new, something huge and sexy and wonderful. Something so, so good. 

When they finally stop kissing, Jon realizes he's been clutching the fabric of Tommy's shirt hard enough to leave creases. 

"Okay," Lovett says after a long moment. "Point taken. Homosexual tendencies actioned."

And so Tommy is laughing when he kisses Lovett, and Lovett is grinning his grin of a joke that's landed as he kisses back, and Jon can see them together, can see their joy meeting and becoming more than the sum of its parts. It's almost unbearably intimate. Jon wants to bear it forever. 

After that, Olive Garden is a blur. Lovett is gorgeous and funny and Tommy is gorgeous and funny and Jon feels like he could float away on a cloud of joy and _want_ at any moment. They get breadsticks. Lovett makes Tommy try to hide one in his jacket. It goes about as well as you'd think. Jon has one hand on Lovett's thigh under the table and his other hand tangled with Tommy's and kind of resents the waitstaff when they bring him food he can't just levitate into his mouth. Lovett tells a joke that has all three of them helpless with laughter, and afterwards, Lovett tells him, _When the corners of your eyes crinkle like that, I really want to kiss them,_ and then looks so mortified and vulnerable that Tommy has to leap in with a weird fact about sheep he read in some 800 page book about 18th century trade in Central Asia to get them back on track. 

And then. And then. They're home. 

"That was fun," Jon says, redundantly. When he'd pulled into the driveway, he'd made Lovett and Tommy stay seated so he could go round and get their doors for them. Tommy had laughed and kissed him. Lovett had given him a smirk that made his skin prickle with anticipation. He's glad he took them on a date. Treated them right. 

Lovett takes a breath like he's about to say something like, _We don't have to,_ or, _If you want to take a raincheck,_ and fuck that, quite honestly, because Jon really fucking wants to, and so does Tommy and so, clearly, does Lovett, and he's not going to let them doubt him. 

Jon grabs Lovett's wrist and pulls him into a kiss, then passes him to Tommy and watches them kiss while the heat of Lovett's lips is fresh on his own. Then Tommy kisses Jon, and Lovett kisses Tommy again, and Jon's shutting the blinds and tugging off his shirt because _yes, this._

Tommy does a deeply gratifying double take and one of his hands reaches towards Jon like he doesn't know he's doing it, he just wants to touch, which lights Jon up from the inside, the wanting and the being wanted a beautiful feedback loop he never wants to break. 

"Sorry we didn't have a confession in the rain," Tommy says, because for all Lovett likes a running gag, Tommy's the one who just will not let this shit go. "I know you--"

Jon shuts him up with a kiss. 

Lovett is watching them both hungrily. “I like how you haven’t considered _I_ might want to take things slow.” 

It has the cadence and smile of a joke, but Jon feels his face freeze anyway. “All I want is to be close to you,” he says before he can stop himself. They don’t have to do anything, not now, not ever, as long as Lovett will let Jon hold him close, will let Jon love him. 

“Oh, shut up, Favreau,” Lovett says fondly. “Of course I’ll suck your dick.” He grins. “And spoon you tenderly afterwards.”

“There’s spooning?” Tommy asks. He’s unbuttoning his own shirt carefully, slowly revealing the smooth, kissable skin beneath. 

“Dick sucking, spooning, and as a special treat, we’ll even let you go get us all Starbucks tomorrow morning.” Lovett’s eyes are trained on the hollow of Tommy’s throat. His cheeks have high spots of color Jon wants to lick. “We here at Lovett Enterprises offer a full service threesome, satisfaction guaranteed.”

He’s just talking to say something, and Jon laughs because of course he does, but his heart is full to bursting. How did he not know he wanted this?

Tommy shoots Jon a conspiratorial glance, loaded with the same giddy joy, and tackles Lovett to the couch, all the better to run his hands up under Lovett’s shirt. Jon joins them. 

Tommy during sex — _this is sex!_ Jon’s brain gleefully informs him, _sex with Tommy and Lovett!_ — is passionate, intense, and tender in a way that takes Jon by surprise while at the same time making perfect, complete sense. Of course he’s tender when he cups Jon’s jaw and kisses his neck with a heat that burns through Jon’s veins. Of course he’s tender when he peels Lovett’s shirt off him and pulls him in by the waist for a scorching kiss. Of course. 

They’re wild about touching Lovett, a dam bursting, nothing to stop Tommy’s hands from exploring the soft vulnerability of his inner thighs, nothing to stop Jon from putting his mouth everywhere he wants to — Lovett’s neck, Lovett’s shoulder’s, Lovett’s belly, Lovett’s dick.

“Oh,” Lovett says when Jon gets his mouth on Lovett’s tented boxers. “How do you want to—?”

Jon pulls down Lovett’s boxers and gets to work. Lovett on his tongue is hot and lush and precious, a gift he never knew to look for but now wants all the time. Why there are hours in the day that don’t have Lovett’s dick in his mouth is a mystery. A crime. 

Tommy kisses behind Jon’s ear and he does a full body shudder, overwhelmed in the very best way. Freedom to touch Lovett is a new joy, but touching Tommy like this is new and precious too, a gift all the more valuable for all the other kinds of touch they’ve shared before. 

He feels like he's just maybe getting the hang of sucking dick, at least a little, when Lovett brings his hand down, tries to move Jon away. Jon just puts his hand on top of Lovett's, refuses to be moved. If it's a crime that he has gone this long without knowing the taste of Lovett's dick, it is a fucking travesty that other men have had Lovett come in their mouths and he hasn't. 

Lovett rectifies this with a gasp, and Tommy's hands are on Jon, jerking him off from behind as Jon leans back against him, sending fireworks through Jon's brain as he breathes into Jon's ear, as Jon gives it up into Tommy's cupped hand with Lovett's come still spilling out of his mouth. 

"Can I?" Tommy gasps, and Jon nods his head or says yes or something, because Tommy can do fucking anything he likes right now, oh my god. 

And then Tommy's pushing Jon against the couch, breathing hard, and bringing Jon's thighs together with big, careful hands. There's the sound of spitting, and the feel of Tommy's dick, hard and wet and so fucking hot, pressing between Jon's thighs. 

Lovett's hands are there too now, overlapping Tommy's, keeping Jon steady so he can do this for Tommy, so they can do this together. 

Tommy's breathing harder, taking his own pleasure as Jon just lies there and lets him, lets Tommy use him, hopes with every fiber of his being that this is as good for Tommy as it is for him. 

"Fuck," Lovett breathes, and that's what does it for Tommy, what pushes him to spill between Jon's thighs, and Tommy's falling on him, kissing him, and Lovett's kissing them both, and Jon's whole body is singing with happiness, with the rightness of this moment. 

"Bed?" Tommy suggests eventually. 

"Bed," Lovett agrees. "This one --" Jon. "-- needs to be middle spoon, and you --" Tommy. "-- need to get your rest if you're going to be fetching us coffees tomorrow morning."

"You're really set on that, huh?" Tommy says, getting them all three to their feet and herding them towards the stairs. "What if I sneak out before you wake up and stop returning your calls?" 

Lovett scoffs. His hand rests on the small of Jon's back as they take the stairs, warm and comforting. "Please. You're horny for three things: our hot bods, commitment, and providing for your sexual conquests."

Jon and Tommy both laugh a little helplessly. Lovett's not wrong, even if _sexual conquests_ has an edge Jon doesn't like. 

"I was all set to freak out about this at Olive Garden, you know," Lovett adds, lightly conversational in a way that would alert them to the seriousness even if the words didn't. They all pause where they are on the stairs. "But I guess I trust you guys, or something? With, like, and I'm not going to say this again, so treasure it." He pauses. Tries to speak. Fails. Tries again. "With my heart, okay? That's what I trust you guys with. My TV pilot and my heart. So don't fuck it up."

"We won't," Jon promises. He means it with all the strength in his body and all the love in his soul. 

"Okay, all right, I'll get the Starbucks," Tommy says, but then he kisses Lovett at the top of the stairs, soft and clear, and then kisses Jon, too, an equal promise. 

"Good," Lovett says, then kisses Jon, completing the circuit. 

Hand in hand in hand, they go to bed. 

###

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback adored -- kudos, comments, carrier pigeon. 
> 
> Title from the Stephen Gaskin quote, "Touch is the first language we speak."
> 
> The carbon monoxide poisoning, Game of Thrones spoilers, and wolves in the kitchen are all real reddit stories (tho carbon monoxide guy didn't post to r/relationships). I made up the one about training the boyfriend. And then I had to warn my wife so it didn't take her by surprise if she looked at my screen and saw a whole bunch of tabs open about how to non-con train your partner like a pet.
> 
> If you like, you're very welcome to come say hi on twitter - I'm [@krfabian](https://twitter.com/krfabian), where I tweet about all manner of nerd stuff (and my original fiction). Tho it is an unlocked twitter, so I don't tend to talk about this fandom on there in anything but the vaguest terms.


End file.
